Posted - 2011.09.02 15:12:00 -
[1]Edited by: Simetraz on 02/09/2011 15:16:08PLEX was released Nov 2008.Within a month of that happening the player levels took a huge jump.Yes Apocrypha came out Mar 2009 but the graph shows a jump in players AFTER the expansions never before.

At first glance all looks good more players then ever playing EVE.However now you have a different kind of player in EVE.Those who don't pay to play.

The problem is how can you expect to keep these players if they can't afford 15.00 a month.You can't update the game cause they can't afford to upgrade their computers.And it also leads to the question of why they should care a tiny bit what happens to the game when they are not willing to pay for it.

It also leads to false numbers when you start counting subscriptions.CCP sees the numbers jump and things look grand and they make investments for the future.The reality is the player base will not be around that long.They will leave the second they don't like something, they don't have anything invested in it so why should they care.

CCP made a mistake with PLEX's.They should have tied them to a paying account.ie Have one account you pay for and you can use PLEX's for your alt accounts.

People talk about free to play, it is already here and we are seeing the results in the poorer quality of the player base.

As always there are exception you can't expect to cover everybody in any generalization.

Originally by:SimetrazPLEX was released Nov 2008.Within a month of that happening the player levels took a huge jump.Yes Apocrypha came out Mar 2009 but the graph shows a jump in players AFTER the expansions never before.

Óyou mean the jump that happened after Quantum Rise?

Oh, and GTC trading was around long before PLEX were introduced, so the problem you suggest would have existed since long before QR. People have been playing ˘for free÷ for ages, and it used to be a lot easier ¨ or at least a lot cheaper ¨ before PLEX came around.¨¨¨˘If you're not willing to fight for what you have in ≡v≡you don't deserve it, and you will lose it.÷¨ Karath Piki

Originally by:SimetrazEdited by: Simetraz on 02/09/2011 15:16:08PLEX was released Nov 2008.Within a month of that happening the player levels took a huge jump.Yes Apocrypha came out Mar 2009 but the graph shows a jump in players AFTER the expansions never before.

At first glance all looks good more players then ever playing EVE.However now you have a different kind of player in EVE.Those who don't pay to play.

The problem is how can you expect to keep these players if they can't afford 15.00 a month.You can't update the game cause they can't afford to upgrade their computers.And it also leads to the question of why they should care a tiny bit what happens to the game when they are not willing to pay for it.

It also leads to false numbers when you start counting subscriptions.CCP sees the numbers jump and things look grand and they make investments for the future.The reality is the player base will not be around that long.They will leave the second they don't like something, they don't have anything invested in it so why should they care.

CCP made a mistake with PLEX's.They should have tied them to a paying account.ie Have one account you pay for and you can use PLEX's for your alt accounts.

People talk about free to play, it is already here and we are seeing the results in the poorer quality of the player base.

As always there are exception you can't expect to cover everybody in any generalization.

Your social commentary is ignorant and insulting to both the integrity of the players and their intelligence. Throwing in the disclaimer in the end is akin to ranting with racial slurs and then saying "But not you guys, those other ones".

Posted - 2011.09.02 15:43:00 -
[5]
PLEX helps new players. If they didn't have PLEX you would have a lot less new players coming and actually stayin in the game. Its the only chance new players have since they will never have enough SP to compete might as well be rich.

Originally by:KunmingBefore PLEX every 0.0 system was worth fighting over now its more logical to do RL work and buy PLEX for pvp costs instead of fighting for something you cant get any other way.

Befor Plex also means before Sov Upgrades. Before those upgrades, a sizeable part of 0.0 was worth little or no more than low-sec space. As an example, I give you 111-F1 in Esoteria. That system is absolute crap. Belt mining is limited to Kernite, Plagioclase, Scordite, Veldspar & Omber, and belt ratting was limited to frigates with some cruisers. Aside from the conquerable station there, that system was a waste of space.

@OP I think Plex has been both good and bad for the game.

On the good side, it was a way for CCP to offer competition to the RMT outfits, setting a cap on their profits. It also offered a way for Eve to become effectively an F2P game for many players. The fact that it is all regulated by the player market really makes it an elegant solution. If selling Plex gets out of hand, you get less isk for your $. If players playing for free gets out of hand, it costs a fortune to do it.

In application, Plex has had some side effects; chief among them is that any character that can earn its plex is worth having. Generally speaking, this is good for CCP, but its not as good for the game environment.

Most obvious is how it enabling it is for botting. That's been discussed to death, so I won't go into it here.

Beyond that, the proliferation of alts has skewed the markets and has diminished the need for players with specialty skills. In the markets, prices for Datacores, PI, Ice, minerals and LPs are all skewed by the number of grind alts that players have. If you can earn 300-400Misk/month with your alt account, then it's paying for itself, and you can play your main while they do it.

As for specialty players, when anyone can go to the market and buy plex and what ever specialty characters they feel they need, what's the point of having a main skilled in those professions? Examples of professions replaced by alts include scouts, traders, haulers, cyno pilots, recon pilots, researchers, miners, & manufacturers. When you can choose to have any of those as an alt character on a free to play account, you don't need friends skilled in those tasks.

Originally by:SimetrazEdited by: Simetraz on 02/09/2011 15:16:08PLEX was released Nov 2008.Within a month of that happening the player levels took a huge jump.Yes Apocrypha came out Mar 2009 but the graph shows a jump in players AFTER the expansions never before.

At first glance all looks good more players then ever playing EVE.However now you have a different kind of player in EVE.Those who don't pay to play.

The problem is how can you expect to keep these players if they can't afford 15.00 a month.You can't update the game cause they can't afford to upgrade their computers.And it also leads to the question of why they should care a tiny bit what happens to the game when they are not willing to pay for it.

It also leads to false numbers when you start counting subscriptions.CCP sees the numbers jump and things look grand and they make investments for the future.The reality is the player base will not be around that long.They will leave the second they don't like something, they don't have anything invested in it so why should they care.

CCP made a mistake with PLEX's.They should have tied them to a paying account.ie Have one account you pay for and you can use PLEX's for your alt accounts.

People talk about free to play, it is already here and we are seeing the results in the poorer quality of the player base.

As always there are exception you can't expect to cover everybody in any generalization.

What you're not seeing here is regardless of who uses the PLEX it has been payed for and still counts against subscriptions because it has at the beginning of the chain been paid for with real money.

All those account that are sub'd with PLEX are still valid paying accounts, it's just that someone else payed the fee for them in exchange for ingame currency, they're not really free acounts because someone had to pay real money in the first place.

If they stopped people being able to sell PLEX all it would do is lose paying (indirectly, they would actually lose the payments from PLEX and as a result the accounts that would use them would close because they can't afford them) accounts and thus lose CCP more money.

Posted - 2011.09.02 16:09:00 -
[10]Edited by: Simetraz on 02/09/2011 16:16:24Edited by: Simetraz on 02/09/2011 16:13:06This is true.However it is entirely dependent on people having the extra money to buy ISK.And as some have pointed out times are tough.So is it sustainable

What happens when the ISK buyers can't afford it and the Prices of plex's go up to the point where it is no longer worth it to pay via ISK.Do those people quit or do they stay in one night and save to money for there EVE fix ?

Posted - 2011.09.02 16:15:00 -
[11]
PLEX makes the entire economy a joke and to some extent the game; being a rich corp, pointless, any nuub with mommys CC is richer. Control systems? Why? For ISK when the people invading have 10 spare ships all bought with PLEX?

This is why I always wondered why people cared about AUR.

You can buy a carrier for RL $$ and no one seems to mind, but god forbid someone buy clothing

Everything this game could be, the entire sandbox, is undermined by PLEX.

If you can get you RL funded ship relaced in minutes in PvP then really, this PvP is no different that WoW; may as well just have everyones ship be replaced in space on a 30 second timer.

Quote:The problem is how can you expect to keep these players if they can't afford 15.00 a month. You can't update the game cause they can't afford to upgrade their computers.

I think this is bogus. I'm willing to bet most of the people who consume PLEX to fund their accounts don't do it because they can't afford $15. They do it because they have a ton of isk and no immediate need for it. I'm sure there are some players out there who only play because they can get PLEX. I don't believe they are the majority.

Quote:It also leads to false numbers when you start counting subscriptions. CCP sees the numbers jump and things look grand and they make investments for the future. The reality is the player base will not be around that long. They will leave the second they don't like something, they don't have anything invested in it so why should they care.

It's not false. Every active account generates income every month. Do you think CCP cares who paid the the sub? They just care that its paid.

The hook to MMOs is the time invested and connections to the community, not the cash invested. Nobody sticks around because they've sunk $3,000 into the game over 6 years. They stick around because of the time and the connections they've made with other players.

Quote:People talk about free to play, it is already here and we are seeing the results in the poorer quality of the player base.

How are us PLEX users poorer quality players? The fact that I spend a few hours every week updating market orders instead of busting out a CC does not in any way change how I interact with the Eve universe. I'd be trading anyways without PLEX and this profession at least is essential in keeping the Eve universe running. It'd be a shame if you had to run to a producers mass sell order every time you needed something. Traders make the market hubs work and save players a lot of time traveling for basic supplies.

Granted not all PLEX funding activities help the Eve universe. Those that suck on an isk faucets drive inflation. Bots get involved sometimes. But those activities are not engaged in solely to get a PLEX. Those players would probably still be doing what they're doing in the absence of PLEX. It's their source of ISK, what they spend it on doesn't really matter. People don't just rat and mission for PLEX. They do it for ISK.

This is true.However it is entirely dependent on people having the extra money to buy ISK.And as some have pointed out times are tough.So is it sustainable ?

What happens when the ISK buyers can't afford it and the Prices of Plex's go up to the point where it is no longer worth it to pay via ISK.Do those people quit, or do they stay in one night and save to money for their EVE fix ?

I see your point and i understand where you're coming from, but you can apply the same argument to subscriptions. If the person can't afford the second account that they run on PLEX in the first place then CCP wouldn't be receiving any money form that account anyway. In the current market even a subscription can't be deemd as sustainable.

Or to put it this way ...

Player has an account, he can't afford to subscribe it and buys PLEX, but as you say the bottom drops out and there are no PLEX to buy, he can't play. CCP is not getting any money.

Player has an account and can't afford to subscribe it so he can't play. CCP is not getting any money.

At least with the PLEX system in place CCP are getting some money from those who would normally be unable to pay to play, albeit indirectly.

I know people will say something along the lines of "you keep saying it's all about CCP getting money, waht about us?", well think about it, if CCP get less money then they will invest less back into the game, the less they invest the less players will pay and eventually the game will close down. The key here is keeping CCP funded enough to keep a great game going.

Originally by:Bootleg JackPLEX makes the entire economy a joke and to some extent the game; being a rich corp, pointless, any nuub with mommys CC is richer. Control systems? Why? For ISK when the people invading have 10 spare ships all bought with PLEX?

This is why I always wondered why people cared about AUR.

You can buy a carrier for RL $$ and no one seems to mind, but god forbid someone buy clothing

Everything this game could be, the entire sandbox, is undermined by PLEX.

If you can get you RL funded ship relaced in minutes in PvP then really, this PvP is no different that WoW; may as well just have everyones ship be replaced in space on a 30 second timer.

Because in WoW when you lose something.. Oh wait, you never lose anything in WoW.

Terribad analogy.

That's what makes eve different, loss. How you replace it is up to you.

For the record I would like to see a nub with mommys credit card try to **** with me. It would generate revenue for CCP and entertain me greatly..Adapt and overcome or become a monkey on an evolution poster.

Originally by:Cipher JonesBecause in WoW when you lose something.. Oh wait, you never lose anything in WoW.

Terribad analogy.

That's what makes eve different, loss. How you replace it is up to you.

For the record I would like to see a nub with mommys credit card try to **** with me. It would generate revenue for CCP and entertain me greatly.

Actually, I've been trying to get a friend to come play EVE, and the fact is they effectily wipe his PvP gear evey content patch because they are on that endless gear inflation thing and it takes him weeks to replace it. When you factor the gear inflation I think players in wow spend more time grinding gear than we do ships.

First there is the issue of RMT, a practice that has existed in every MMO that has ever existed. Of course RMT is a "solution" to part of the other problem game developers have it just has many drawbacks that aren't acceptable to game developers or most players.

Here is the issue that a subscription game faces, There is a large segment of the potential player base who have a lot of time to play but insufficient money to pay there is another smaller subset who has plenty of money to pay but insufficient time to play. The former represents a large potential to fill the servers with "life" that is being missed out on (after all what's the point of a massively multi-player game if there isn't a massive number of people playing it.) Larger populations generally promote more successful MMOs.The later represents a lot of potential money that the developer is not getting their greedy little paws on.

Problem 1: some players have time to play but can't afford to pay.

Problem 2: some players have plenty of money to pay but don't have the time to play.

Now what if the second type of player could pay the former to play for them?

This is what Real money traders do, they play the game for those customers who have money to pay but no time play. So the customer who has plenty of money but no time buys some "gold" to improve their character, in level based games they may even pay a service to level their character for them so they can maximize their enjoyment during those times they can play without always feeling left behind.

The problem with this from the developers point of view (In addition to all the customer service and credit card fraud headaches that some of the less scrupulous RMTers engage in) is that they aren't getting a piece of that action.

So what if there was a legitimate avenue through which the time poor but money rich could directly pay the money poor time rich for those services that would cut out the middle man and give the developer a cut of the action?

Enter the GTC plex system. From the developers point of view who pays for an account is irrelevant as long as someone is paying for it.

I mean you could just as easily buy a GTC for your buddy so he could play for you the Plex/GTC system just creates a market that eliminates the need for that personal relationship to enable the transaction.

So instead of paying for your buddy's account in exchange for them playing for you, you simply pay a stranger to do it. Normal micro-economic mechanisms go into action and an exchange rate of time(isk) vs money(GTC/Plex cost) is set and voila the developer get all those greenbacks from the time starved money flush in their bank account, and they get to keep those cash strapped players that keep the game population healthy.

In addition since there is now a legitimate risk free avenue for "gold" buyers to pay people for their time it undercuts the RMTers who now have to sell their "gold" far enough under the market rate for their customers to be willing to risk their accounts which will make many of them toss in the towel and move on to another more lucrative MMO.

The plex concept is total epic win and quite possibly the most brilliant idea CCP ever dreamed up.

Posted - 2011.09.02 17:15:00 -
[18]
plex is not the problem with declining numbers....... lack of game balancing, badly coded expansions offering for the most part useless in game features and general lack of all things spaceshipy is why the numbers are down

Originally by:Dane ElGranted not all PLEX funding activities help the Eve universe. Those that suck on an isk faucets drive inflation. Bots get involved sometimes. But those activities are not engaged in solely to get a PLEX. Those players would probably still be doing what they're doing in the absence of PLEX. It's their source of ISK, what they spend it on doesn't really matter. People don't just rat and mission for PLEX. They do it for ISK.

THERE IS NOT AND CANNOT BE INFLATION IN EVE.

ISK is not currency in the same sense real life green backs are, it's just another resources that people harvest. If too much isk is being generated people will move to other activities and it will balance out.

Almost no forgone income, because i'm not playing other than logging in to update accounds and I am 100% certain that at the very least I would have have paid for more than 2 accounts and almost certainly not more than 1 account for the months prior to me taking a break. During the break the last two months, the plex I have been retiring for them have cost them no forgone income.

Their costs of the band with, forum mantenance, and database management related to my small activities remaining (updating skill queues, some prorated percentage of data costs maintaining the data of my unused items, miniscule bandwith updating queues... bit more for patches) must cost them pennies a month for the plex I've been sucking up.

That doesn't provide the whole answer to the thread title question, but it is important to note when waying costs. Even if not all are like me, some are like me, so any rational person needs to start paring down estimated costs from the starting point of the $17 maximum cost if every plex bought with plex and used for game time would have instead been purchased with real money had the plex option not be available.

I see your point and i understand where you're coming from, but you can apply the same argument to subscriptions. If the person can't afford the second account that they run on PLEX in the first place then CCP wouldn't be receiving any money form that account anyway. In the current market even a subscription can't be deemd as sustainable.

Or to put it this way ...

Player has an account, he can't afford to subscribe it and buys PLEX, but as you say the bottom drops out and there are no PLEX to buy, he can't play. CCP is not getting any money.

Player has an account and can't afford to subscribe it so he can't play. CCP is not getting any money.

At least with the PLEX system in place CCP are getting some money from those who would normally be unable to pay to play, albeit indirectly.

I know people will say something along the lines of "you keep saying it's all about CCP getting money, waht about us?", well think about it, if CCP get less money then they will invest less back into the game, the less they invest the less players will pay and eventually the game will close down. The key here is keeping CCP funded enough to keep a great game going.

Very true, I just found it interesting when looking at the numbers on how much of the subscription base uses PLEX, and granted the only ones that know the real numbers are CCP.

It just brought me to some interesting thoughts.What if a kid loses his credit card and stops buying ISK how many other people will be effected by that, cause they dependent on the ISK buyer.And how many PLEX's need to be bought to support the population.What you could say 50% or 40% on average buys one PLEX a month with RL cash.So that means the other 40% to 50% of the population is entirely dependent on someone else's pocket book.

I would hope the numbers are not that high, but if they are ?That and an example of one time a miner showed up in corp.They had a plan to purchase and run 20 miners all on PLEX.The plan failed and they quit and last I heard they went to another game.It just struck me seeing just one player running numbers like that, how many others ?

And as you say it is all about money.CCP is running a business and it cost money to keep it going.And personally I don't mind supporting it.

On a company's books paid in advance time, in any form, whether it is PLEX, or a 1 year sub, is a liability. But especially time that is prepaid but not scheduled, like PLEX.

And it is not just a liability as an abstract concept, it is a real liability. The reason is if a large number of players all pay with PLEX at the same time then the monthly real cash flow will be lower. If the company is cash strapped this can cause temporary dips into the red.

They are no doubt hoping to convert those PLEX into AUR.

Also, in CCPs position they are directly competing with a black market. Because "illegal" is always cheaper than "legal", each time they lower the price they squeeze RMT margins.

COPYRIGHT NOTICEEVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CCP hf. has granted permission to EVE-Search.com to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, EVE-Search.com. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.